Three (Plus One) Go Cruising

Did you notice that we’d been gone for a little while? OK, maybe don’t answer that question.

The babies and I (and my mum), we took a little holiday. A holiday like no other we’d ever been on before. Yep, we went on a Cruise!

Let me backtrack a little bit. I was perusing NetMums one evening (pre-sex beaker) when I came across a thread looking for parent bloggers who might be interested in reviewing a P&O cruise on their blog. A no brainer, right? So I left my details and thought no more about it until I had an email asking me if I wanted to go on a cruise with my children. In a week and a half.

OF COURSE I DID!

And so we prepared to go cruising. Found the kids passports (harder than you’d think, they were ‘somewhere safe’), threw enough clothes in a suitcase to see us from Southampton to Monte Carlo and off we went.

I was both excited and nervous as the extent of my knowledge on boats starts at passing my RSA Sailing Level One when I was 12 and ends with the film Titanic. Pulling up next to our home for the next week, the Ventura, at Southampton’s Ocean Terminal on 11th October was literally awe-inspiring. It was MASSIVE. Massive.

We boarded in a process that involved lots more security checks than I expected but was much quicker than I anticipated and off we sailed into the sunset. Well, kind of. It was drizzly old England after all so there was no sunset to speak of and we had to wait for the rest of the passengers to embark before we set sail. So we sat by the pool, had a spot of lunch overlooking the port one side and one of Ventura’s pools on the other and had a pre-holiday glass of wine. My blogging friend Steph was on the trip too so we said hello and let our kids have a bit of a play.

Needless to say we had an absolutely wonderful few days on board mv Ventura. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be bringing you tales of all our adventures at sea, so stick with me to find out all you have ever wanted to know about taking your family on a holiday on the sea. In the meantime I’d like to say a huge big thank-you to the wonderful people at P&O for sending us on a holiday of a lifetime. I kind of feel like I owe them a kidney or my firstborn child, but since I am fairly attached to both those things I’ll have to offer them my eternal gratitude in the form of blog posts instead.

P&O sent us away for a complimentary week on Ventura but as always I’ll be writing about experiences completely truthfully.

How fantastic! What a brilliant experience. We’ve been shortlisted for a similar opportunity with Royal Caribbean and with a bit of luck we may also get to try a cruise some day soon, it’s a dream of mine so keeping all my fingers and toes crossed.
Looking forward to hearing more about your trip

Sorry you feel that way Kate, feel free to skip over these posts if you like! A complimentary cruise was too good to turn down. You can check out my sponsored/gifted post disclosure here: https://morethantoast.org/about/disclosure/

Hi – I do realise you have a disclosure policy (which is great) I was just commenting on the number of them recently….in my opinion a lot. I mean, another one just popped up in my news feed about eco/LG something a rather.

And whilst I agree with skipping over them – you don’t realise they are sponsored/gifted until you actually click onto the entry and down the bottom see the disclosure and while this really only takes a couple of seconds, it annoys me.